Stepfather to Shane Dronett, James Breeden stands near the late football player's grave while talking about Dronett's abilities on the football field. Guiseppe Barranco/The Enterprise
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco

Atlanta Falcons' Shane Dronett (75) celebrates after the Falcons recovered a fumble by Minnesota Vikings quarterback Randall Cunningham in the second quarter of the NFC Championship game on Sunday, Jan. 17, 1999, in Minneapolis. The fumble recovery led to a touchdown pass from Chris Chandler to Terance Mathias. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)
Photo: ED REINKE, STF

Atlanta Falcons' Shane Dronett (75) celebrates after the Falcons...

Former Bridge City native Shane Dronett - who played with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons - was found dead in his Atlanta-area home on Jan. 21, 2009 of an apparent suicide. Enterprise file photo
Photo: Beaumont

Former Bridge City native Shane Dronett - who played with the NFL's...

** FILE ** In this 2001 file photo released by the NFL, the Atlant Falcons' Shane Dronett is shown. Dronett, who played 10 years in the NFL and started every game on the Atlanta Falcons' 1998 Super Bowl team, was found dead at his home near Atlanta on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009, Gwinnett County police said. Dronett was 38.(AP Photo/NFL, File) ** MAGS OUT. NO SALES. EDITORIAL USE ONLY **
Photo: Anonymous, HO

A recent study showed that Bridge City graduate and former NFL and University of Texas star Shane Dronett had a brain disease cause by repeated hits to the head. Dronett committed suicide in 2009. Dronett is picture here (75) attempting to make a tackle along with teammate Travis Hall, who Dronett's mother called his best friend.
Photo: DAVID T. FOSTER III, MBR

The cold metal of a loaded .45-caliber pistol pressed into the skin between Candace Henry's eyes.

Shane Dronett grew up in Orange just wanting to fish, hunt and play sports. He had been a 10-year National Football League veteran and, at least in past years, a good family man. Now, with his finger on the trigger, he was hunting his mother.

"Are you ready to (expletive) die?" Candace said he screamed repeatedly at her. It was May 2007.

She stared into her 6-foot-6 and 300-pound son's brown eyes, and his expression was maybe more frightening than the gun.

Shane eventually put down the gun, leaving it on the edge of his bed. Later, Candace would hide it.

But less than two years later, at age 38, he would use a different gun to take his own life.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy

The family Shane left behind, including a wife and two children, didn't understand why he had changed. They just knew something was different about the man they had known and loved. He once was a loving father. Now, he was an absent-minded loose cannon.

"He thought everyone was turning against him," his wife, Chris, wrote in an email to The Enterprise.

Late last fall, the family found out why. Dronett, a Bridge City graduate and former All-American defensive lineman at the University of Texas, was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease characterized by dementia, depression, paranoia and rage caused by repeated hits to the head. His family did not talk about the results until a week ago.

The disease is common among football players, who spend years enduring repeated head impacts. Fourteen former football players have been diagnosed with CTE since it was first identified in a football player, former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, in 2002.

This story has been repeated over and again, with different names. And it's usually characterized by a horrific ending, as reported in four cases by The Associated Press.

Former Pittsburgh Steeler Justin Strzelczyk led police on a 40-mile chase following a minor traffic accident that concluded when he crashed into a tanker carrying corrosive acid. Fellow Steeler Terry Long killed himself by drinking antifreeze. Former Cincinnati Bengal Chris Henry fell from the back of a pickup truck that his fiancee was driving, reportedly after an argument.

Dave Duerson, a former Chicago Bear, recently shot himself in the heart. His brain was immediately donated to the Boston University group, according to the AP. Stern said that study is not yet complete.

The former athletes range in age from 18 to 82. What they all have in common is the path of destruction they left behind before their untimely deaths. Diagnosis is often difficult, and too often, families and allies are left to wonder why their husband or father, son or friend seems nothing like the person they once knew.

Something wrong

Shane's youngest daughter, Hayley, then 12, bounded into the living room and jumped onto her father's lap. It was early 2007. Candace said Shane didn't move, and she tried not to react for fear Hayley would notice.

Shane was a statue, maintaining his blank stare at the wall.

Before, he would have playfully wrestled her to the ground or held her for a hug. Now, nothing. Something was wrong.

It started with migraines

Shane first complained to his parents about severe migraine headaches in the fall of 1995, soon after stepping off the Denver Broncos' team bus before a game in Houston. He had been taking pain medication for the headaches but refused to miss a play.

"Sometimes a lot of heart can get you in trouble," said his stepfather, James Breeden.

Chris said he complained of dizziness and headaches after most games.

CTE doesn't happen after one concussion. It has occurred after a player has no reported concussions, according to Stern. It comes from repetitive jostling of the brain, which leads to a buildup of dark protein, which leaves the brain with dead spots. They cause the dementia, depression and mood swings.

"That toughness, part of which gives you the ability to mask real pain, can lead to fatal consequences," former Atlanta Falcons teammate Jamal Anderson wrote about Shane on his blog Friday. "We must find a way to seek help for real issues. Toughness be damned, I don't want to lose another friend."

An NFL lineman, such as Shane, gets hit on the head during most plays - dozens of times per game. Those regular hits, which doctors call subconcussive, lead to problems without proper recovery time.

CTE is undetectable by an MRI or CT brain scan. So no one knows for sure what is wrong until the athlete dies and an autopsy is performed.

"It wasn't just after games that he would feel the effects of subconcussive hits," Chris said, referring to the pounding most NFL players endure during practices, too.

That's why misdiagnosis is such an issue. Shane's family believed his change was related to a brain tumor, which was removed in June 2007. But things worsened after his surgery. Doctors saw "abnormalities" related to concussions during the tumor-removal surgery, but nothing more.

Chris said Shane saw many doctors during the last two years of his life, but none could explain what was happening.

She wrote this week that, now that the family has answers, Shane's personality changes are at least easier to understand. Still, she wrote, understanding doesn't heal all wounds.

"None of us who were a part of Shane's family or good friends with him," she wrote, "will ever have complete closure."

Former Detroit Lions player Lou Creekmur, who lived until he was 82, met the end of his life misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Three other players were misdiagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.

Among the list of former athletes with CTE are two former hockey players, several professional wrestlers and a litany of boxers - once believed to be the only athletes susceptible to the disease dating back to the 1920s, when it was called punch-drunk disease and eventually dementia pugilista.

Now, CTE has even been identified outside of sports. Stern says his group has found CTE in mentally disabled head bangers, wives who have been subjected to severe domestic abuse and even a circus clown who was repeatedly shot out of a cannon. He fully expects it will also be found in military personnel subjected to repeated blasts.

Candace hopes Shane's story can be a lesson for future NFL players and hopes the league can add a CTE warning to future player contracts. She says she has left messages for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell but never received a response.

When contacted about Shane's case, league spokesman Greg Aiello said they haven't received specifics, but the league has been working on rules to prevent players from using their heads while tackling and ensuring concussions are properly treated. The NFL donated $1 million to Stern's group last year.

"(Chris) and I had never heard of (CTE) in our lives," Candace said. "We scratched our heads a thousand times but never found out."

A scared phone call

"My dad keeps on beating me and my mom," Hayley, then 13, told the 911 operator in late September 2008, four months before her father's suicide.

Her voice was quivering as she described how Shane had dragged her around by the hair, grabbing her face and trying to suffocate her.

"He said he was going to kill me," the tape revealed.

Trying to remember

Shane's friends and family each has his or her own version of him they want to remember. But each also remembers when they noticed he had changed.

Chris said it started in 2006 on a night he woke up screaming that someone was trying to blow up the house.

For James, it was when Shane started complaining about his Falcons coaches, something the Shane he knew would never have done.

And for Candace, it was when he called in the middle of the night yelling, "What are you doing on my land?" In between all of the uncharacteristic outburts, Shane often acted normal; he even held a real estate office job and traveled to a few Longhorns games.

"He was my son," Candace said, "but he wasn't Shane."

Eventually, just to test him, Candace said she brought up the incident with the pistol. She said his only response was, "Where is that gun?"

Candace said Shane was placed in an inpatient psychiatric facility at least three times for the 72 hours allowed. Each time, he'd come home and there would be more of the same.

He was medicated, but Candace said he stopped taking it, complaining about waking up drowsy. Instead, he would wake up happy and quickly regress.

"There were times that we would see a glimpse of the 'old' Shane, but it would not last very long," Chris said.

Late in his life, Shane became more and more erratic and scary.

He punched a waiter at a local burger joint for no reason and punched a hole in his SUV's dashboard, according to Candace.

He frightened his family so much that Candace said his daughters, Hayley and Berkley, rarely slept at home. And Candace said that Chris had a nearby Marriott hotel where she would hide out when Shane was enraged, a safe place where he never found her.

Getting better

As they drove through Shane's exclusive Sugarloaf neighborhood outside Atlanta, he was in a fantasy world. Just Shane, Candace and her friend Joan Marie pretending they were the paparazzi, stalking the stars with a cellphone camera on the outskirts of the local country club in July 2007. They stopped at the driveway of Toni Braxton's house to get a look.

It was moments like these that made Candace think Shane would snap out of it.

The end

Shane and Chris were having another fight on the morning of Jan. 21, 2009, according to a police report, this time because he didn't believe his family had gone to stay with friends on a ski trip in Utah. The report stated that the day before, Shane had sent his suburban Atlanta neighbors a series of strange text messages.

When the fight got heated, Shane went to his SUV and grabbed a shotgun. Chris ran for her life.

Shane walked into the kitchen and stood near the wooden table, the place Candace said he sat each morning in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt while drinking a cup of coffee and working on his laptop for his second career in real estate. No matter how much they hoped the old Shane would someday wake up and be sitting there again, the pleasant memories were fading. The old Shane was gone, and the man who took his place was erratic, angry and irrational.

On that day, after the fight, he found another gun. It was a Remington 12-gauge shotgun. He turned it on himself.